A family of potters active in Campania from the 17th century until the end of the 19th. Originating in Vietri sul Mare, where an Ambrogio and his sons Ascenzio and Domenicantonio (Tesauro) operated in the second half of the 17th century, the family, which consisted of several branches all related and devoted to pottery, had in the descendants of Antonio, who was born in Naples but operated in Cerreto Sannita in the first half of the 18th century, the most important branch.

Cerreto boasted a long tradition of ceramic production, characterized by a rustic style that re-proposed through exuberant modeling, decorated with bright colors on a white background, the objects otherwise produced in Naples in fine materials: holy water fonts, table services, inkwells. To encourage the economic recovery of the Samnite town, after the 1688 earthquake that had destroyed it entirely, a five-year tax exemption had been sanctioned for outsiders who intended to open a "faenzera" there. Numerous ceramists were therefore induced to move there, dividing their time between Cerreto and the nearby hamlet of San Lorenzello, where the Titerno River guaranteed water to drive the mills for grinding clay and colors.

Antonio, son of Simone, was born in Naples on Nov. 1, 1689; he was baptized in the church of S. Michele Arcangelo all'Arena (Borrelli, 1972, p. 17), near Borgo Loreto, where he resided until 1706, when he moved to Cerreto. In 1708 he married Vittoria Mazzarella, by whom he had five children (Vigliotti, p. 16); among them the eldest son, Simone, certainly was a ceramist. Widowed in 1718, Antonio remarried the following year to Lucia di Clemente; of the six children born of the union we remember, in addition to Nicola, future founder in Naples of the Manifattura Giustiniani, Francesco, born in 1735, who likewise worked in Naples (ibid., p. 30). In 1722, after working at the forge of Nicola Russo, a Neapolitan transplanted to Cerreto, Nicola opened his own workshop in San Lorenzello where, in 1727, he signed and dated the majolica tympanum of the portal of the Congrega di S. Maria della Sanità.

The panel depicts the Madonna and Child surrounded by floral decorations. From the chromatic point of view, the artist adopts the typical colors of cerretese ceramics: manganese yellow, turquoise and paonazzo. Equally, the depiction, characterized by a marked folk vein and some naiveté of stroke, fits well into the groove of Cerreto production.

In 1727 Antonio took over a faenzera from Giuseppe Bonanotte of Capracotta (Donatone, 1992, p. 46); in 1734 he was head laborer of Nicola Russo's workshop (destroyed by fire that same year); while his son Simone, born in Cerreto on Jan. 8, 1710, presumably continued to run the family workshop. In the Catasti onciari of 1754 (Id., 1968) Antonio no longer appears. He died in Cerreto in 1764 (Vigliotti, p. 34), the year in which Simone appears to have run a rented furnace (Donatone, 1992, p. 51).

Other members of the G. family resided and operated in Cerreto, certainly related to Antonio; among them a Giuseppe di Gaetano, who is also reported to have been active in Maddaloni in 1734, and a Domenico, who is credited with the introduction in the Samnite center of the en camaieu bleu technique, that is, turquoise chiaroscuro, traditionally used for apothecary vessels.

From the mid-18th century the vicissitudes of the Cerret branch of the G. family were intertwined with those of the Neapolitan branch, which had specialized for generations in the production of floor tiles (the so-called "riggiolari"). Particular mention should be made of one Ignazio di Matteo, born in Naples in 1686 and author of the majolica floor of the church of S. Andrea delle Dame (1729) and that of Corigliano Palace completed in 1742 (Borrelli, 1972, p. 16). The floor of the church features a striking ornamental repertoire in the French taste, rich in plant and floral festoons, cherubs and birds, which appears updated on the Rococo taste.

Nicola, Antonio's penultimate son, was born in Cerreto on Jan. 7, 1732 and trained alongside his father; he arrived in Naples in 1752 and settled in Via Marinella, a street on which the major Neapolitan kilns opened. In 1755 he married Antonia Letico by whom he had eight children. In 1756 he appears to have been a member of the guild of ceramists that belonged to the Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary at the Church of the Magdalene, a fact that indicates his full integration into the Neapolitan professional body. Nicola's few autograph works include two painted tiles, signed and dated 1758, depicting a Capriccio of architectural ruins (Graz, Landesmuseum Johanneum).

The paintings are inspired by the courtly majolica of Castelli d'Abruzzo, both in the color palette dominated by yellowish, green and brown, and in the subject matter-evidently a reference to certain majolica by Francescantonio Grue-which also reveals an attention to coeval Neapolitan landscape painting. In both, a set of ruins is depicted, populated by small, motionless figures, silhouetted imposingly against a background characterized by wide glimpses of cloud-swept sky. In these works Nicola reveals skills as a refined painter, although in later years his fame derived mainly from his talents as a whimsical plasticist, which earned him the nickname Nicola Belpensiero or de' Pensieri.

In 1761 Nicola signed and dated the tiles for one of the floors of the Santa Croce - Sant'Elia palace in Palermo (Donatone, 1997, p. 63), still in situ but in poor condition. Pan and Syrinx appear in the center, surrounded by a rich decoration of festoons and volutes, resolved with clear, bright colors and remarkable fluency of mark. A commission to work in Sicily reveals that his fame as a majolica maker must have been well established by this time.

Presumably around the 1970s, Nicola founded "Figulina Giustiniani" located in Marinella.

After a beginning characterized by the production of cerretese-style majolica (which is, moreover, poorly documented), according to nineteenth-century critical tradition, the manufactory met with success thanks to the working of "English-style" earthenware, pioneered in England by J. Wedgwood and introduced in Naples even before the Real Fabbrica Ferdinandea, which adopted it starting in 1782. In the last years of the century, mainly tiles, crockery, and vases were produced, in sober taste, whose forms, already of neoclassical inspiration, present a decorative repertoire that is still rococo: pastel colors, minute little flowers on a white background, and putti that denote a cautious transition to the new, probably for commercial reasons. Among the most representative examples is the crater-shaped vase, entirely enameled in white and decorated with little flowers, depicting, in the flaring of the neck, on one side a country dance scene-the so-called Allegria d'està-on the other the Medina Fountain, described in miniature taste and with delicate colors (Naples, Museo artistico industriale). The vase rests on a wide rounded foot trimmed in black, as are the Greek-style handles. The work's main source of inspiration turns out to be the coeval production of the royal manufactory, which in those years made porcelain, earthenware and ceramics of high formal quality.

Figures and plastic groups also came out of the factory, first in earthenware and later in porcelain; but the critical reconstruction of this body of objects, often unmarked, appears difficult since independent plasticists were frequently hired, often coming out of the royal manufactory whose forms and molds were used, although this was forbidden, once it was closed (1806). Fittipaldi (1992, no. 472), in particular, attributed to Figulina Giustiniani a group depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds (Naples, Museo della Certosa di S. Martino) datable to around the end of the 18th century. Between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the following century, the earthenware artifacts show an incused "G" mark and a more porous paste than that used by the royal manufactory, as well as a less transparent type of covering varnish that results in greater craquelure on the surface.

At the turn of the century, the manufactory devoted itself mainly to the reproduction of Greek and "Etruscan" vases found in those years in excavation campaigns in Pompeii and Herculaneum and which were in great demand among the public, including the international public.

In 1789 Nicola went to Ascoli Piceno with his son Michele, at the invitation of Abbot V. Malaspina, of the Olivetan monastery of S. Angelo in Texello, for the purpose of setting up and conducting a majolica factory for which the abbot had obtained a ten-year privative from Pope Pius VI.

The contract sanctioned the establishment of a partnership between the potter and the abbot, who would procure the money needed to start the business and the salaries for the first year; at the same time Nicola undertook to provide his labor and to teach the trade to local workers and apprentices, repaying the money received in advance through the earnings made from the first year of operation. From this it is evident the strong bargaining power assumed by Nicholas, whose technical background was valued equal to entrepreneurial capital.

In 1790, perhaps because of problems that arose with the water supply, Nicola returned to Naples. In 1792 Giovanni, Nicola's son, asked to be admitted to work in the Royal Ferdinandea Factory (Carola Perotti, 1978).

Nicola died in Naples in 1815; and the management of the enterprise was taken over by his son Biagio. Born on Feb. 3, 1763, the latter had already been working alongside his father for some time, with the help of his brothers, each employed in a specific area of workmanship: Paolo Antonio (born March 25, 1774), for example, specialized in painting fine artifacts. Biagio experimented with new materials and was an entrepreneur attentive to market demands. He developed recipes of his own invention and promoted the use of raw materials extracted within the Kingdom, which were less expensive and rich in aesthetic value, such as clay from Tressanti, in Apulia, characterized by a distinctive yellow color. Beginning in the second decade of the 19th century, still under Biagio's direction, the factory experienced its greatest impetus - it came to employ sixty masters and over a hundred workers - associating for a few years, in order to gain greater competitiveness on the market, with the younger Migliuolo firm located equally at Marinella; together with this one it participated in a number of exhibitions dedicated to industrial production - among those held every two years in Naples - and also won a number of medals (Donatone, 1991, p. 65 n. 2).

Evidence of this company, which distinguished itself for a type of production of a remarkable level, both technical and aesthetic, is the Charlesworth table service (private collection: ibid., tables 8-12), marked "FMGN," elegant and linear in form and embellished with landscapes whose "delicate and vivid polychromy of the enamels still reflects a late eighteenth-century aura" (ibid., p. 78).

The factory's growth in the following years is documented by the reports of exhibitions, which report, for example in 1834, as many as eleven lines of production, among which porcelain of the transparent type and biscuit stand out, as well as an original "opaque porcelain" (Mosca, p. 118) prepared from production waste and used to make prized "Etruscan-style" vases, free reworkings in the turquoise and gold colors of classical vases. Porcelain production, for which Biagio had applied in vain in 1828 for a five-year privative from King Francis I, ceased when the duty on foreign porcelain was abolished. Pottery and earthenware were continued; but that was the beginning of the decline. Biagio died around 1838; the leadership of the business was taken over by his sons Antonio and Salvatore born of his marriage to Maria Rosa Nigro. Ten years later, in 1848, the large manufactory at Marinella closed due to a dispute with Baron Valiante, owner of the premises, which was settled in favor of the latter, who expropriated goods and machines. Reduced to operating small, the G.'s ceased operations soon after. Only after a few decades, around the late 1960s, did the factory reopen at the hands of one of the descendants, Michele. Production was moderately, but ephemerally, successful, presenting products of modest quality and tired, repetitive decorative modules. The dates of birth and death of Michele, who, "to lead a life full of luxury and waste, was reduced to dying a miserable death," are unknown (Mosca, p. 151).

The factory closed for good shortly after 1885, the year in which its artifacts were presented at the Milan Industrial Exhibition.